(Natural News)
In a move that is sure to get liberal snowflakes rushing to their safe spaces faster than ever, Princeton University is now encouraging students
to report “problematic experiences based on [their] identity.” This
means that if students find themselves in a situation that makes them
feel offended or uncomfortable in anyway, they can – and should,
according to Princeton – go tell somebody about it, even if it is
something that normally wouldn’t result in disci

It’s said that about 80 percent of New Year’s resolutions are abandoned by the second week of February.1
This means if you made one for 2018, there’s a good chance it may
already have failed. There’s also a sizable number of people who set no
goals at all, New Year’s resolutions or otherwise, in part because they
may not realize the importance of goal setting and in part because they
may not know how to do it.2
There are other reasons why you may avoid goal setting as well,

(Natural News)
Beginning shortly after President Donald J. Trump defeated Hillary
Clinton in the 2016 election, Americans were treated to a steady diet of
stories from the American Pravda media claiming that he “colluded” with
the Russian government to “steal the election.”
For months information meant to substantiate the claim, made in the
absence of any real evidence, was “leaked” to various news outlets known
to be friendly to Clinton, Democrats, and every known enemy

Immune system intelligence: Your biochemistry “morphs” to defend against new parasites

(Natural News)
Researchers discovered how the immune systems of certain species evolve to better adapt to new parasitic threats,
all the while maintaining critical immune function that remained
virtually unchanged for over millions of years, in a study published in
the journal Nature Communications.

Scientists from the University of East Anglia, U.K. and Dalhousie
University, Canada looked at the immune genes of the guppy fish (Poecilia reticulata) known as the Major Histocompatibility Complex (MHC genes), to determine how they adapt to survive.

Lead study author Dr. Jackie Lighten from UEA said: “Guppies are a
small, colorful fish native to South America, Trinidad and Tobago. They
are a fantastic model for researching the ecology and evolution of
vertebrates.”

The researchers studied MHC genetic variation in 59 guppy populations
in Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, and Hawaii. They found hundreds of
different immune variants called “alleles,” which appear to be clustered
in a smaller number of functional groups or “supertypes”.

Professor Cock van Oosterhout, from UEA’s School of Environmental
Sciences, said: “Each supertype protects the host against a specific
group of parasites, and these supertypes were common across populations,
and species, irrespective of the location. However, the alleles that
make up a supertype track the rapid evolution of the parasites, and they
too are evolving rapidly.”

The researchers found that the guppies make fine adjustments to these
genes depending on their location – the perfect adaptation technique
that enables these fish to survive in many different habitats. Despite
this adaptation, the genes maintained critical function that remained
practically the same for tens of millions of years.

“MHC genes produce protein structures that are on the external
surface of cells. These genes are diverse and so produce an array of
proteins, each of which presents a specific part of a parasite or
pathogen that has attempted to infect the body. The specific shape of
the protein dictates which parasites it can recognize, and signals to
the immune system to prevent infection,” said Dr. Lighten.

From aquariums to laboratories

Guppies are popular tank fish that have been used in many scientific
experiments as these tropical fish are widely distributed the world
over. One such experiment was done in 2015, when scientists spent a
month scaring guppies to determine whether these vertebrates have individual personalities.

The scientists isolated guppies in glass tanks and simulated a
predatory environment using a pulley-rigged lawn-ornament heron named
“Grim” and found that each fish demonstrated a unique response to
stress. The experiments went on every three days for four weeks.

According to the researchers: “Some of them go straight to the
shelter. Some just stop moving, maybe hoping they won’t be seen. Some
rush to the side and just swim up and down trying to escape.”

The study showed that some guppies were natural cowards while some
showed braveness, and they kept proving their inclination to one or the
other for the duration of the experiment. The researchers believed that
studying individual traits in animals is important to the study of
evolution.